


given gifts

by vanitaslaughing



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Fishing, Gen, Miqo'te Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 15:51:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19467187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanitaslaughing/pseuds/vanitaslaughing
Summary: Anyone else would have greeted him quietly, humbly. The Warrior of Light, on the other hand, raised his hand with a cheerful exclamation. Mischievous grin and all.-- END OF 5.0 SPOILERS. READ AT OWN RISK --





	given gifts

**Author's Note:**

> LAST CHANCE TO BACK OUT  
> THIS IS POST 5.0. PROCEED WITH CAUTION IF YOU HAVENT FINISHED SHADOWBRINGERS YET.  
> _________
> 
> hi. shadowbringers didnt kneecap me, it bashed my skull in with a nailed bat and reminded me that hey, actually,  
> you like things other than ffxv
> 
> so here i am  
> ashamedly.  
> very very ashamedly.
> 
> [the wol in this is lahen aquilinus as his Canon Name would be had i not given him a lore compliant name](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D-dCVUtXoAAsrmI.jpg)

Normally people who entered knocked. It was common courtesy and by all means, no matter how much time passed with the sun setting and rising as it had not for over a hundred years, he was still technically the leader of the Crystarium. They regarded him with awe, with respect.

The quiet of the Ocular was broken with the doors opening and someone not even remotely meekly striding into the room. Their boots clicked against the floor, and he didn’t even have to turn around to know who had just intruded upon his silent vigil—his silent recovery.

Truth be told he had not been expecting the other to be back already. Then again… whatever was unfolding in the Source, it had been unfolding without the Warrior of Light for quite a while. If he were necessary there then surely fate would guide his attention back to where it belonged. As it had always been. As it would always be, now that the hands of fate were not leading him to his demise in the midst of the Eighth Calamity.

Few people marched with their heads held that high after what had befallen the Warrior of Light time and time again, and fewer still did it with a mischievous grin on their faces after all the heartbreak, all the betrayal. All those burdens. They were not gone—they still weighed the man down, that much was clear.

But, and that he had learned during the expedition that saw the doors to the Crystal Tower opened, Hydaelyn’s Champion was nothing if not an oddity.

Anyone else would have greeted him quietly, humbly. The Warrior of Light, on the other hand, raised his hand with a cheerful exclamation. Mischievous grin and all. “Good to see you’re still in one piece!”

“’Tis good to see you, too, are unharmed. How fares the Source?”

He tilted his head a little. “Naught of import, as Urianger would say. Not like the Alliance needs me to fight on the front lines when Garlemald seems to be retreating, ignoring the fact that the rest of the Scions have taken matters into their own hands.” For a split moment the cheerful expression went dour. “Ever… ever since the Tempest the Ascians have lain low. The few summonings that do take place are met with my fellows who share my gift. In the great equation of things, I am wholly unnecessary for the full picture right now. Not that I mind the reprieve, mind.”

A moment of silence.

He closed his eyes, trying to think of something to say.

Then the other man moved ever so slightly and he opened his eyes again. The dour expression was once again removed with the almost childishly mischievous grin that so many of their race seemed to share even on this Shard—and for a moment he felt like G’raha Tia rather than the Crystal Exarch again. A Student of Baldesion who knew too much about a history that was his by birthright without him knowing, snatching the prize away from the Warrior of Light as a means to test his fellow Miqo’te. All but barging into the Crystal Tower side-by-side with him—and staying despite NOAH’s protests.

“That’s not why I’ve come here, however.”

A swift movement, the throw of someone well-versed in tossing weapons. It happened so fast that he barely managed to catch what the Warrior of Light threw him, and for a terrifyingly long moment he thought that retribution for the lying had finally come.

Alas, once he focused properly he saw what had been thrown to him and he frowned. A laugh rang through the Ocular, loud, crystal-clear—untainted by either light or darkness and very much alive. As alive as it should sound, a far cry from the subdued but determined man marching on for a world that was not his to avoid his own demise, a far cry from the agonised hoarse whisper interrupted by horrid coughing as he realised just who precisely had brought them to this point. No, this was the same younger man making a dance out of a fight in the middle of a relic of a long bygone era, an amused twinkle in his eyes as ancient Allagan creations failed to harm him in a way that mattered.

What the Warrior of Light had thrown him was a fishing rod.

“C’mon, the night’s still young and if Lyna’s to be believed you’ve been holed up in here for five sunsets straight. We don’t have to stay out long, but rather than following me head first into danger how about you join me on another kind of adventure?”

He blinked a few times in confusion, gaze darting from rod to the man who had felled primals with nary a second thought.

“I had… forgotten you fished.”

As he had said in Mor Dhona all those years ago. It was a distant memory, something so inconsequential yet whimsical that he had nearly forgotten about it. Before the Scions found him and adventuring started paying off properly, he had… made his living with fishing.

The man darted forward, grabbed his free arm and started pulling.

“You don’t get to say no, by the way. Captain’s orders. If I come out without you, she’s going to come in and drag you out by your ears _or_ might try finding where you hide your tail under these heavy robes, she said.”

“Ah.” He loved the girl, truly he did. But that was no idle threat. Considering that the Warrior of Darkness’ remaining ear kind of flicked when he said that also told him that he, too, expected this turn of events to hurt. A lot. “Very well.”

* * *

The Trivium had been knocked off the list as too loud and busy. The researchers and experts there were buzzing about loudly and there was no chance that the famed Warrior of Darkness and the elusive Crystal Exarch would not immediately get hounded by questions, get roped into excursions or their attention would be demanded because of some recent development. The recent buzz there had also made the fish a lot more skittish—and for a long, long moment he wondered if the other had sat down there to fish while everything had gone on.

The Personal Suites were also deemed rather inappropriate. Simply because people lived there, and even if it was possible to cast a line from the very floor he had his room on, there were still the other inhabitants to consider.

Thus, somehow, he found himself dragged to a shaded spot that was even darker at night listening to the gurgle of water off the main roads in the Quadrivium; they were all but hidden away from prying eyes. There were many such spots in the Crystarium but he had never actually been to this particular one.

The Crystarium was already abuzz with life during daytime. It had ever been, even as endless light turned the skies into a blindingly radiant sight to behold. But now that the moon was up and the stars were out the entire placed seemed to still quiver in delight. Though those that had been born here were unable to properly see in the dark—a most curious ailment that he also found himself struggling with, underlining the fact that G’raha Tia, the awoken guardian of the Crystal Tower from years ahead in the Source had ceased existing and he had fully ingrained himself into the First as the Crystal Exarch—they still were up and about. Excited voices of passing people carried over to their little spot; merchants, travellers, children, even those people that had once only considered themselves the unfortunate surviving remnants one and all still more than elated about the dark returning.

When they had started talking, he didn’t know.

Perhaps it was because the other’s name slipped out—he looked delighted to be addressed by his name rather than merely by his myriad titles. It wasn’t even a special name, he joked. It was so dreadfully normal that most people would never guess him to be the Warrior of Light by name alone. He answered that Raha was just about the same as Lahen; and before long Exarch and Warrior were engaged in one of the least demanding conversations he had had since the day he told Lyna a bedtime story.

Eventually he found himself wondering about this… distraction. He’d spent quite a while with everyone from NOAH, the other man sitting there currently winning a tugging contest with whatever fish he had hooked—but not once had the fabled Warrior of Light looked… so unceremoniously common. They weren’t here as saviour and leader, they were here as old… comrades? _Friends?_

“How,” his voice was surprisingly raw and he lowered the rod a little. “How come you not once despise the gift you were given?”

Lahen had been talking. Said that sometimes he missed those times when he had lived in Little Ala Mhigo and sat side by side with the man who raised him as they both fished. Said that he still remembered the first time he entered any of the city states, said that sometimes he wished he could just sit down more to fish somewhere. He could have travelled the realm as fisher just as well as he could have as adventurer.

“Gift Chocobos, beaks, you know the drill. No, I jest.” He hadn’t cast his line again after reeling in a rather impressive Laxan Carp. “But let me ask you; how come you do not despise your gift, then?”

The Blessing of Light—and a promise made by his ancestors to the fading bloodline of Allagan royality.

His eyes widened a little. Those deep red eyes that had taken a while to get used to. He had always had one, of course. It had always been piercing according to some, but the difference eyes of the same colour made to his face had been striking. He had scarce recalled the man looking back at him with those sad, tired eyes before he went to sleep. He definitely had not remembered the same man who awoke years later.

For a long, heavy moment it was quiet and only the water rumble could be heard. Then Lahen turned to look up. Stars were twinkling up above, the skies so familiar yet so unlike the one they had both grown up under. Norvrandt’s skies were… clearer. Darker. There were constellations they both recognised but there also were countless others that did simply not exist on the Source.

“There’s nothing saying I’ll have to die doing this… considering that we steered fate away from that path. I can still retire and fish to my heart’s content, just as my old man does. Not that he’s _that_ old, being an Elezen and all, but y’know. Maybe I’ll fish up a stray from a lake as well, make it a family tradition or something. But as long as I’m needed, I’ll do it. Just as you did this for a long time. Will continue doing this for a long time.”

His heartbeat was tied to the Crystal Tower. Perhaps in the distant future… perhaps next week, he would whisk it away elsewhere. Start anew somewhere else not as Crystal Exarch but once again as G’raha, just as one day the Warrior of Light and Darkness would turn himself into the fisherman Lahen. Or let go. Vanish after making certain the Crystal Tower was no longer needed.

“Twelve preserve me, that got all gloomy. It’s a beautiful night, and here we are talking about that dreary heavy stuff.” And just as suddenly as the heaviness had rolled in it dispersed, leaving naught but the glittering stars above and their shimmering reflection on the water behind. “You should work on your posture a little. If something bites, it’ll get away quickly unless you’re ready to fight back, especially sitting like this. Up straight, Raha!”

He blinked a few times. The only person—and that person’s personhood was debatable at best, he realised with a shudder—that had ever had had a _worse_ posture than the Warrior of Light standing up had been _Emet-Selch._ And here he was, telling an old friend from across time and space to sit up straight.

He couldn’t really help it. Before he even realised that he was speaking, the words had come out: “An odd thing to demand, considering that you might as well be the Warrior of Slouch, but very well.”

For a hero who had saved this world and the Source, Lahen certainly managed to gawk like an idiot. Blanking, perhaps. His eyes were wide and his mouth hung slightly open as the Exarch sat up properly—he had learned how to fish, a lifetime and a half ago, back together with people whose descendants were now celebrating the dark’s return here in the Crystarium. Back on the Source as member of the Students he had had no need for that particular skill, and in a world torn asunder by Calamity there had scarcely been time to properly fish like this. With their backs unwatched, with the waters unsullied and bright. No one here in the Crystarium would approach them with weapons drawn ready to kill the weak and unprepared. But once he arrived in Norvrandt, the people who made their home at his home’s base started inviting him along. Not that it ever went anywhere. He was the Exarch—their guardian and leader. Not someone who spent his time fishing with the people.

After a while the other Miqo’te managed to shake off his stunned silence, shook his head. There was that playful twitch of his remaining ear that had already stood out back when they had both been part of NOAH. A mischievousness that seemed completely misplaced with the Champion of Hydaelyn.

“Rude, I’m just trying to help.”

“Much appreciated, but you have done your fair share of helping. This is supposed to unwind us both, is it not? So let me slouch and laugh at my failure.”

They both started laughing. It wasn’t quite the same as it used to be, so very long ago for him and not so very long ago for the other. G’raha Tia and Lahen Aquilinus had laughed differently in the shadows of the Crystal Tower while on their way to the Labyrinth of the Ancients. Laughed louder. Less burdened. The two who laughed here were the Crystal Exarch and the Warrior of Darkness—an old soul and an upset soul. But they laughed either way.

Because, against the odds, they were both still alive. Would be for a while.

And being alive meant that while he laughed a fish all but tore the rod out of his hands, bait and all, and the two of them watched it vanish into the water that so dutifully reflected the night sky that he had yearned for close to a hundred years. For a moment they once again were silent, then they laughed harder. Laughter that joined the other voices in the Crystarium, on the First, under the once again dark skies.

This wasn’t what he had expected. The Warrior of Light on the Source had become a beacon of hope, someone who always marched on against all odds. Who reached a helping hand to people even in a world that took and took and took, as mankind slowly but steadily gave in to madness. Even with a blade shoved through his chest he stood tall, dying with the first curse to ever pass his lips not because he did not want to die but because he died _last._ Because he had been unable to save his friends from their fate, as if they weren’t tied together.

No one remembered the details. The stories were passed on. No one would have believed the fabled Warrior of Light to be sitting there laughing, a single tear running down his face—whether from laughter or from something else, the Exarch did not dare asking. G’raha Tia might have asked. But G’raha Tia slept, waited for a future that would need him again.

And he genuinely hoped that this time around, it would be the one that he wanted. The future of a people come together to build and open the path through their own achievements, like the Ancient Ones of Amaurot. Not the people of the Source, few in number with naught but the reports of the long-since passed Cid Garlond in his hands to ask a boon of a relic otherwise forgotten by time.

* * *

Lahen paid for the rod in the end.

Try as they might, they had not been able to get it back and while the vendor considered it an honour to have loaned something to the Warrior of Darkness and the Crystal Exarch he also needed the money to live now that trade was picking up across all of Norvrandt.

“Put it on my endless tab,” the Exarch said, letting a last echo of G’raha through. And the Warrior of Light merely put a hand on his shoulder rather than say anything else. It was the Exarch again who then said, “Blessed Darkness knows we and most of all I owe you a lot and wish to repay you for what you have done for us.”


End file.
